Daily Life of the Aztecs

by Jacques Soustelle

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  Quauhcoatl at once called the Mexicans together and told them the words of the god: and so, following him, they thrust their way into the marshes, among the water-plants and the rushes, and suddenly 'by the side of a cave they saw the eagle, poised on a cactus, eating with delight . . . and the god calling to them said, "Oh Mexicans, it is here." And they wept, crying, "At last we have been worthy (of our god); we have deserved (the reward); with astonishment we have seen the sign: our city shall be here".' This happened in the year ome acatl, two -- reed, the year 1325 of our era. 10

  The Codex Azcatitlan 11 symbolises the beginning of the Mexicans' life at Tenochtitlan by a picture of Indians in boats, fishing with hook and line or with nets, while other Indianas with sticks drive the fish towards the open nets: around them are water-birds and tufts of reeds. This must in fact have been the manner of life of the Mexicans of that period. It was in no respect different from that of the little riparian tribes outside the towns, which gave up the greater part of their time to fishing and wildfowling. They were called atlaca chichimeca, the lake-dwelling savages. 12 They were armed with nets and with the atlatl, the spear-thrower, which is used to this day for the taking of wildfowl. They had their gods -- Atlaua, 'he who carries the atlatl', Amimitl (from mitl, an arrow, and atl[?], water), and Opochtli, 'the left-handed man', 'he who throws darts with his left hand' -- gods who were still known in Mexico in classical times. 13

  In the eyes of the townsfolk of Colhuacán, of Atzacapotzalco or of Texcoco, the Mexicans cannot have looked any better than the other 'lake-dwelling savages. They came to the urban tribes on dry land when in the first place they needed beams, planks and stone to build their town, and they paid in fish and water-animals. 14 'Meanly, wretchedly, they built the house of Uitzilopochtli. The oratory that they raised up to him was very small, for living in a foreign land, among the rushes and the reeds, where could they have found stone or timber? The Mexicans came together and said, "Let us buy stone and timber with whatever lives in the water, the fish, the axolotl, the frog, the crayfish, the aneneztli, the water-snake, the water-fly, the worm of the

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  lake, the duck, the cuachilli, the swan and all the birds that live on the water. With these we shall buy the stone and the timber"." 15 At the beginning of the sixteenth century the memory of this time was celebrated once a year, during the feast of the month Etzalqualiztli. The priests went to bathe ceremonially in the lake, and one of them, the chalchiuhquacuilli (literally 'the priest of the precious stone', that is to say, 'of the water') uttered the ritual formula, 'This is the place of the serpent's anger, the humming of the water-mosquito, the flight of the wild-duck, the murmur of the white rushes.' At this everybody leapt into the water, splashing with hands and feet and imitating the cries of waterfowl. 'Some called like ducks (literally 'spoke duck' -- canauhtlatoa) others like herons, ibis or egrets.' And this same rite was repeated on four consecutive days. 16

  There is every reason to believe that the place where Quauhcoatl and his companions saw the eagle and the serpent was the same as that which, in the sixteenth century, was to become the site of the temple of Uitzilopochtli; that is, somewhat to the north-east of the present cathedral and at about three hundred and thirty yards in the same direction from the middle of the large square that is now called the Zócalo. All the traditions agree in stating that the first temple, which was no more than an 'oratory', ayauhcalli, was built exactly on this spot: the succeeding rulers spared nothing to give Uitzilopochtli a temple worthy of him, but the buildings, the pyramids and the holy places of the subsequent reigns always arose on the same emplacement, on the same sacred ground pointed out by the god himself. The imperial palaces were built round this religious centre of the nation; and from here, too, radiated the main lines of the city's development. The Mexican city is above all the temple: the glyph that means 'the fall of a town' is a symbolic temple half-overturned and burning. The very being of the city, the people and the state is summed up in this 'house of god', which is the literal meaning of the Aztec teocalli.

  The original centre of Mexico rested on firm and even rocky ground: the temple was built 'by a cave', oztotempa. It was in fact the top of an island in the middle of the swamp

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  in a wide bay of the lake. Around Tenochtitlan the shore made a sweeping curve, a great arc studded with towns and villages -- Atzcapotzalco and Tlacopan to the west, Coyoacán to the south, Tepeyacac to the north. The great salt lake of Texcoco stretched eastwards, and on the south stood the fresh-water lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco. Other islands and islets rose above the surface of the bay around Tenochtitlan, particularly the island which was at first called Xaltelolco (sand-hillock) and then Tlatelolco (earthhillock). This stood immediately to the north of the site of the temple of Uitzilopochtli. The island of Tlatelolco was separated from the island of Tenochtitlan by no more than an arm of the lake, which was afterwards spanned by a bridge.

  It must have been a most prodigious labour for these first generations of Mexicans to adapt the network of islets, sand-banks and mud-banks, deep and shallow marshes -- to organise it for the purposes of living. The Aztecs were obliged, as an amphibious people in an amphibious environment, to fabricate their own earth by piling up sludge on rafts made of rushes; they had to dig canals, make embankments, build causeways and bridges: and as the population increased what are now called urban problems arose, and they became more and more difficult to resolve.

  The fact that a great city could be founded in such conditions, and that it could grow, created by a people with no land, is a proof of truly miraculous ingenuity on their part and of astonishing perseverance. The pride that they later showed was not without its justification; for how great a distance there was between the wretched hamlet of straw huts cowering in the reeds and the shining metropolis of the sixteenth century. It is scarcely surprising that the Aztecs should have been so strongly moved by the splendid destiny that had changed them from a poor and solitary people into the richest and most powerful.

  EXTENT AND POPULATION

  At the time of the Spanish conquest the City of Mexico covered both Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco. This 'Greater Mexico' was a recent creation. Tlatelolco had been peopled

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  by an offshoot from the Mexican tribe, who had founded their own city under a dynasty that came from Atzcapotzalco -- a city that prospered in war and trade. But the Mexican rulers could not bear the presence of a rival town for long, a rival and a relative not a bowshot from them. The Tlatelolcans themselves provided the pretext for the quarrel: their king Moquiuixtli, who had married a sister of the emperor Axayacatl, treated his wife with contempt; he was also an ambitious, restless man, and he strove to ally himself with other cities in the valley against Mexico. Relations reached such a pitch of bitterness that war broke out: in 1473 the Aztecs invaded Tlatelolco and took the great temple. Moquiuixtli was hurled from the top of the pyramid and dashed to pieces. From that time on Tlatelolco lost its separate identity and was incorporated into the capital under the orders of a governor. 17

  As a consequence the city stretched southwards from the northern limits of Tlatelolco, opposite the shore-village of Tepeyacac, as far as the marshes which gradually merged into the lake: the southern boundary of the urban area was shown by a series of named localities -- Toltenco ('at the edge of the rushes'), Acatlan ('the place of the reeds'), Xihuitonco ('the meadow'), Atizapan ('whitish water'), Tepetitlan ('beside the hill') and Amanalco ('the pool'). In the west, the city stopped at about the line of the present Calle Bucareli, at Atlampa ('the water's edge') and at Chichimecapan ('the river of the Chichimecs'). In the east it stretched as far as Atlixco ('at the surface of the water') where the open water of Lake Texcoco began. The whole was in the form of a square with each side measuring about 3,200 yards, and it covered some 2,500 acres: it is worth recalling, for the sake of comparison, that Rome, within the Aurelian Wall, contained 3,423 acres. This entire area had been transforme
d by two centuries of labour into a geometrical network of canals and raised earthworks organised around two principal centres, the great temple and the square of Tenochtitlan and the great temple and the square of Tlatelolco; and about several secondary centres, the different districts or quarters.

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  Few subjects are as obscure as these quarters of Mexico. It can be taken for a fact that the unit called the calpulli ('group of houses') or the chinancalli ('house surrounded by a hedge') was at the base of Aztec society, and it was therefore shown in the territorial division that is the visible image of that society in terms of land. The Spanish chroniclers usually translated this by barrio, a quarter; and modern American authors use the word clan. 18 In my opinion the old Spaniards understood the facts better than the modern archeologists. 'Clan' brings to mind various laws of marriage and lineage, or even a totem, and it seems to me less appropriate to the situation as it is known than 'quarter', which stands for a territorial entity. The calpulli was above all a territory, the common property of a certain number of families which shared it among themselves in order to exploit it according to laws that we shall treat later on. It had the elements of an autonomous administration under the command of the calpullec, an elected head; and it had its own temple.

  It is likely that the calpulli remained the essential nucleus of the tribe during its migration and up until the foundation of the city. How many were there then? We know the names of seven early calpulli, but it cannot be absolutely asserted that there had not been more of them. Tezozomoc 19 lists fifteen at the time when the Aztecs on their march were about to reach Tula, that is to say, at the end of the twelfth century. There were perhaps twenty at the beginning of the urban period; but that does not prove that their number may not have increased between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. 20 In any case one must add the calpulli of Tlatelolco after it was annexed: we know seven of these, which were merchants' quarters; but it is reasonable to suppose that there were others. And lastly there were some quarters, as for example that of Amantlan, occupied by specialists in feather-mosaic, which seem to have been incorporated into the city comparatively lately. However it may be, the plan of Mexico drawn up by the learned Alzate 21 in 1789 shows no fewer than sixty-nine named localities in Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco: it cannot be affirmed that all these localities

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  corresponded with an equal number of calpulli, but it is certain that many of them did.

  Apart from this, a new kind of division was instituted a little after the foundation of Mexico. The traditional accounts attribute it to Uitzilopochtli himself. 22 The whole city was cut into four sections in relation to the great temple: in the north, Cuepopan ('the place of the blossoming of the flowers'); in the east, Teopan ('the quarter of the god', that is to say, 'of the temple'); in the south, Moyotlan ('the place of the mosquitoes), a particularly suitable name, for it was there that the canals and the streets ended in marshes which, in colonial times, were called Ciénaga de San Antonio Abad and Ciénaga de la Piedad; and in the west Aztacalco ('beside the house of the herons'). This subdivision into four great sections had become so much a part of daily life that the Spaniards kept it throughout the whole colonial period, merely giving the four regions Christian names: Santa Maria la Redonda (Cuepopan), San Pablo (Teopan), San Juan (Moyotlan) and San Sebastián (Aztacalco).

  It is clear that this division into four parts, ascribed to the chief god of the tribe, had a primarily administrative and governmental character. It was a controlling network superimposed upon the multiplicity of the calpulli old and new: each of these great sections had its own temple and a military chief appointed by the central authority. In this the new section was essentially different from the calpulli, which elected its head: furthermore, the new section possessed no land.

  Thus the whole urban area was organised about its principal and secondary centres: the calpulli, each with its temple and its telpochcalli ('young men's house', a kind of religious and military college); the four sections, with their temples; and finally the great teocalli of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, the imperial palaces and the government buildings.

  What was the city's population? No census has come down to us, although the Aztec emperors had the means of knowing at least the number of families living in Mexico. The conquerors estimated the number of households or

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  inhabited houses at figures ranging from 60,000 to 120,000. 23 It remains to be decided how many persons, upon an average, made up a household. Families were large, and the ruling class was polygamous. Torquemada allows that a household contained from 4 to 10 individuals, and if one follows him one has the average of 7 for each house. But this figure is probably an underestimate, for many Mexicans had some of those servants of inferior status whom we inaccurately term slaves. I admit that my figure is arbitrary, and I deeply regret it, but as a better one is lacking, it may be accepted that Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco counted 80,000 to 100,000 households of 7 persons, or a total population of from 560,000 to 700,000 souls. Let us say that the population was certainly above 500,000 and probably below 1,000,000.

  Of course, we are speaking here only of the capital itself: but it is a fact that at the period in question many of the towns and villages on the dry land were no more than suburban satellites of the city. Even when they had kept the outward forms of self-government, as Tlacopan had done, their real standing was that of mere dependencies of the capital. This was the case with Atzcapotzalco, Chapultepec, Coyoacán, Uitzilopochco, Iztapalapan, Colhuacán, Mexicaltzinco, Iztacalco, etc. -- that is to say, practically everything that now makes up the Federal District of the Republic of Mexico.

  They were rich suburbs, as the Spaniards noted when they arrived. 24 Cortés remarks 25 that the towns on the shore stretched right down into the lake itself, which seems to show that their population was increasing, and that in order to make room the people on the dry land were building out in the manner that was usual in Tenochtitlan. It was, therefore, an enormous conurbation, which, having spread itself on the shore, was now eating its way into the lake -- a vast urban area that embraced more than 1,000,000 human beings.

  GENERAL APPEARANCE; ROADS AND TRAFFIC

  As Bernal Díaz says, the conquistadores 'saw things unseen, nor ever dreamed': all the eye-witnesses concur in the

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  astonishing splendour of the city. Even Cortés, the most coldly calculating of them all, is free in his praise of the beauty of the buildings; and he particularly notices the gardens, sometimes embanked, sometimes at ground level. He speaks of the wide, straight streets, and the traffic of the boats on the canals beside them; of the aqueduct bringing fresh water into the town; and of the size and activity of the markets.

  The proud hidalgo, writing to Charles V, goes so far as to say that the Indians 'live almost as we do in Spain, and with quite as much orderliness.' He adds, 'It is wonderful to see how much sense they bring to the doing of everything.' 26

  On the 12th of November, 1519, four days after their entry into Mexico, Cortés and his chief captains went to see the market and the great temple of Tlatelolco with the emperor Motecuhzoma II. They went up the 114 steps of the teocalli and stood on the platform at the top of the pyramid, in front of the sanctuary. Motecuhzoma took Cortés by the hand 'and told him to look at the great city and all the other towns near by on the lake and the many villages built on the dry land . . . This great accursed temple was so high that from the top of it everything could be seen perfectly. And from up there we saw the three causeways that lead into Mexico -- the causeway of Iztapalapan, by which we had come four days earlier; the causeway of Tlacopan, by which we were later to flee, on the night of our great defeat 27. . . and that of Tepeyacac. We saw the aqueduct that comes from Chapultepec to supply the town with sweet water, and at intervals along the three causeways the bridges which let the water flow from one part of the lake to another. We saw a multitude of boats upon the great lake, some coming with provisions, some going o
ff loaded with merchandise . . . and in these towns we saw temples and oratories shaped like towers and bastions, all shining white, a wonderful thing to behold. And we saw the terraced houses, and along the causeways other towers and chapels that looked like fortresses. So, having gazed at all this and reflected upon it, we turned our eyes to the great market-place and the host of people down there who

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  were buying and selling: the hum and the murmur of their voices could have been heard for more than a league. And among us were soldiers who had been in many parts of the world, at Constantinople, all over Italy and at Rome; and they said they had never seen a market so well ordered, so large and so crowded with people.' 28

  The witnesses all record the same impression: lofty towers rising everywhere above the white, flat-roofed houses; a methodical, crowded busyness, as of an ant-heap; a perpetual coming and going of boats upon the lake and the canals. Most of the houses single-storeyed, low, rectangular, flat-roofed. Indeed, only great men's houses were allowed to have two floors; and in any case it is obvious that buildings raised upon piles in a yielding soil were in danger of collapsing as soon as they passed a given weight, except in the comparatively rare case of their being built on a solider island or islet.